The Left’s Longing for a Moderate Islam

Today’s post is by The 800lb Gorilla, a conservative blogger and acquaintance of mine for some years. The piece is a response to my assertion that many on the left are trying to distance the French terrorists, who executed the staff of “Charlie Hebdo”, from Islam altogether. In fact just today I heard a report that a Frenchman declared “they were not Muslims, they were terrorists”. Well of course, they were Muslims and the degree to which they differ from “the average Muslim” has as much to do with our perceptions as it does any truth, which Gorilla discusses below.

Some quick definitions to help with understanding the piece.

“dar al-Islam vs dar al-Harb”: The notion that the world divides into two parts, the “clean part” which embraces Islam and the “dirty” part which does not, and is destined for chaos and strife.